My First Thousand Titled Tuesday Games
I recently found out that I have already played more than one thousand (precisely 1002) Titled Tuesday blitz games - if a dozen of games from tournaments, canceled for technical reasons after some four rounds, is included.
This milestone deserves a blog!
Speaking about results, there's nothing to be particularly proud about. I never scored higher than +4 in a Titled Tuesday (TT) tournament, therefore, showed good play only sporadically. Overall result: +493 =97 -412. The most individual encounters in these tournaments, six, were played against GM Krikor Mekhitarian (score 2,5-3,5).
All reasons are personal. I'm not yet ready to stop playing chess completely and at the same time, I don't want to play serious, over-the-board chess anymore. Maybe, someday? But generally, it's already too much pressure, particularly after a stroke that I survived in 2019. I played only two OTB blitz tournaments after that and feel that it's really enough for the time being.
But it's still good to play sometimes versus the world's top professionals and very promising young players, for example. And to experiment in openings - or to play my good old openings/variations some of which are no longer popular, so who will play them if not me?! Almost no one, in some cases. I'm also playing more topical variations on which I'm working with my chess students.
Sometimes I posted the curious TT blitz games in this blog. And in 2020 I wrote a theoretical article (survey) for New in Chess Yearbook 137 on the Black's pawn sacrifice ...b7-b5! in the Saemisch King's Indian, the line which I played almost exclusively in the online blitz.
Thus, the online blitz has kept me alive as a chess player for some time, and perhaps it will continue for some time longer. I never was too serious about blitz: never considered myself to be a professional in this form of chess. It certainly helps.
Truth be told, there hardly was anything especially interesting in my most recent TT events. For the record, below is one game.
